Hello and thank you for visiting AikiWeb, the
world's most active online Aikido community! This site is home to
over 22,000 aikido practitioners from around the world and covers a
wide range of aikido topics including techniques, philosophy, history,
humor, beginner issues, the marketplace, and more.

If you wish to join in the discussions or use the other advanced
features available, you will need to register first. Registration is
absolutely free and takes only a few minutes to complete so sign up today!

From IHTBF #1:
I started training at the Aikikai Honbu Dojo in January of 1976. . . . My instructor, Kuwamori Yasunori came to Nidai Doshu's one hour class with me, twenty minutes late. Doshu stopped the class to ask what he was doing there, because he knew he never got up early; and I was introduced to Doshu as a student of Saotome Mitsugi, who was, at that time, on the outs with the Aikikai and not my teacher anyway. Doshu looked at me "consideringly," and then I piped up in really broken Japanese to correct (!) my teacher and say that I wasn't Saotome sensei's student, he was, in fact a friend of mine, but I was Terry Dobson's student (Terry considered even more of a problem at the time -- and how about that "he's a friend of mine?" It was true in those days, in what was a strangely complex manner, but unbelievable for a young kid, an ikkyu, to say). Doshu pursed his lips, looked me up and down and called over Shibata Ichiro, "introduced" me as Terry Dobson's student. Shibata knew this was one of those special moments. Then it was one of those Bug's Bunny cartoons, when there's a whirlwind of arms and legs and the unsuspecting character is suddenly snatched up, spit out, snatched up again. At the end of that class, Kuwamori said to me he was going home to go back to sleep (laughing up his sleeve, no doubt), but I should take the next class. And I see Shibata-san talking to Miyamoto-san, and the next class starts (I have no memory of who was teaching at that point -- it sort of felt like I was in an extended automobile wreck) and Miyamoto runs over, asks me to practice and even though that teacher called for a change of partner at the end of each waza, Miyamoto kept me like a bulldog with a favorite bone, and chewed on me the entire hour. The next morning, it was Seki-san, and I thus met the top three uchi-deshi . . . .

Shibata-san and I were roughly the same age, both of us in our mid-twenties. He was a lean man with a hungry look, a squared away crew-cut, high cheek bones, with large forearms. His best technique, then, was his irimi-nage: he'd step in behind and drop both hands on my shoulders, then sharply bend his knees and pull backwards, twisting so that my inside shoulder and side of my face would drop onto the mat. He'd continue to step behind me, and I'd turn inwards, trying to regain my feet. Just as I did so, he'd bring an ironwood-hard forearm across my throat and down I'd go. After awhile, I learned to take a "roll through the air" rather than fall backwards, which, I was told, looked spectacular, given my two meters of length, flying through the air.

He also had a solid koshinage, impeccably timed, his hips literally tripping me at mid-thigh height. At the moment of that trip (properly called, "koshikage"), he'd cut downwards, and one would take a ferociously hard fall. He threw properly, however, and although it would blow the cobwebs from your brain, the impact resounding down to the bone marrow, you weren't hurt, just stunned.

I liked practicing with him best in Nidai Doshu's class, at 6:30 in the morning, one that was obligatory for him. Shibata-san had a taste for alcohol, at least then, and he was often hung-over that early in the morning. He and I had kind of unspoken agreement. He'd see me, come over, looking a little green, and say "Let's go slowly." Occasionally, "accidently," I'd speed up and throw him hard or move fast (the only time I could get away with it) -- just enough to make it seem like an over-enthusiastic accident -- and he'd pale, and squeak out, "slow down," and I'd apologize ... and ten minutes later, do it again. It would have been suicide to do that later in the day, but in the morning, he was a hurtin' pilgrim, just praying for a soft place to lay his weary head.

His atemi were very powerful. He broke one man's jaw, and he once hit me in the side hard enough to stop me in my tracks, hunched over in pain. He was rough, he was hard, but most of the time, that's all it was. I personally experienced nothing nasty when training with him -- just very hard, very powerful impact.

One aspect of his training was flawed, however. At least in those days, he was very concerned about his image as a young assistant instructor. On far too many occasions, he'd start working out with a tough visiting foreigner, maybe with a judo or other background and they'd start going faster and harder, having a good time. Then, let's say, Shibata-san would leg-sweep the guy and dump him. The other man would be excited, happy that at last he was on the aikido mat with someone with whom he could play and with whom he could pull out his other skills. So he'd leg sweep him back, dumping Shibata in the same manner he was dumped. Instead of laughter, this engendered rage, sometimes even a near fight, but usually a threatening lecture that if one was willing to shame the instructor, one must be ready to die.

After an incident like this occurred with a friend of mine, a high-level judo practitioner from New York, I grew angry with him and tended to avoid his classes. One morning, however, I was in Ichihashi sensei's class -- or so I thought. He was ill and Shibata-san took over the class. By that time, I'd already entered the Araki-ryu and was spending less time at the dojo. I hadn't seen him in quite some time. He was teaching katatedori ryote-mochi kokyunage -- a two-hand grab of one arm. He came over and had me grab him -- he threw me powerfully. He then told me to throw him. He grabbed my arm and hunched over, concentrating all his weight downwards. He stopped my movement cold, three times. Having started grappling in the Araki-ryu, I responded without thinking. I entered behind him, and shot my free arm under his chin, and bucked my hips, arching him backwards. This freed the hitherto trapped arm that I then used as a brace on my strangling arm. I threw myself backwards, put in the hooks (my heels on his thighs) and arched backwards on the ground, one fraction of an inch from choking him out. Somehow, I thought of the consequences. I figured if I choked him unconscious, he wouldn't see the humor - I'd have to choke him to death. My training partners were looking at me with their jaws agape, and not knowing what else to do, I decided, "What the heck, I'll see what happens next," and I let him up.

Shibata-san got up, perhaps another hung-over day, I don't know, but he just stood there a moment, looking at me, as if I was a puzzling alien life form. What I had done was so outlandish - particularly given both his reputation and his frequent demonstrations on me how much more powerful and skilled he was, that it was as if what has occurred simply did not compute. He walked away, shaking his head. One of my friends, a former SAS commando started laughing and said, "I can't believe you are still alive." "Me, neither," I said. To his absolute credit, he never sought me out later for payback.

Another day that I vividly recall was during the first International Aikido Federation consolidation in, I believe, 1977. That morning, instead of Doshu, Shirata Rinjiro sensei taught class. There were easily one hundred and fifty people on the mat. Shirata sensei was allotted one and one-half hours. The majority of the students were foreign, with a particularly numerous French contingent, many of whom had high dan rankings. Shirata sensei had a very quiet demeanor, very gentle, very humble. The manners of French students were particularly appalling. Shirata sensei bowed in and started warm-ups. Many of these high-ranking Europeans started engaging in conversations, ignoring the warm-ups (these were not the dojo regulars -- these were representatives of national organizations, many of whom ranked each other, who behaved with all the uncouth gaucherie of a United Nations bureaucrat with diplomatic immunity). After fifteen minutes (this was one of those "hidden in plain sight" moments -- he did some solo exercises that, as poorly as I remember, I'd never seen before), Shirata sensei took a bokken. He started speaking about shihonage, underscoring what an important technique it was, and demonstrated shihogiri with the bokken. With surely a chuckle -- well aware that the majority of those in the class were dismissing him merely because he was unknown to them - he said, "I'm sorry, I don't know much about the sword. Osensei developed a lot of things after I studied with him." The French kept talking, something that Shirata sensei ignored. I made a small mark at this point, because two of these six dans were standing, conversing in front of me, in the front row of the serried ranks of students <yes, standing!> while he was teaching, and enraged, I grabbed both of them by the koshiita of their hakama and slammed them into seiza, like cracking a whip. They whirled around and I said, "Shut the f**k up." Cross-cultural communication -- they understood my English! -- and they turned around, bustling like a couple of broody hens on their knees. I suddenly felt a hard poke in my back. I turned around, ready for some kind of Gallic expostulations, and there was Waka-sensei (Moriteru), giggling with a big grin on his face.

Then Shirata sensei called Shibata-san out for ukemi. It didn't start out well. The class was over one-half hour old, the old man had just done warm-ups and a "simple" set of sword swings, and he hadn't exerted any authority over the class. Shibata-san, perhaps, can be forgiven, in that he reached out, in bored fashion, to take what he apparently assumed was a nice, apparently ineffectual old guy's arm. I should mention that Shirata sensei's hands were huge, like rhododendron bushes hanging from massive wrists. Imagine Shibata-san sticking out an arm towards the west. Shirata-sensei went further west. And further. I believe he covered one 1/3 the width of the Aikikai's mat. Shibata-san's face was like that of Wiley Coyote in the Roadrunner cartoons when he realizes that the rope he took hold of was attached to an anvil that had just been dropped off a cliff. The final cut of Shirata sensei's shihonage was like Itto-ryu's primordial cut: perfectly centered, from sky to ground, except he was cutting with a human being in his hands instead of a sword. Shibata-san made one of the most magnificent recoveries I've ever seen. I truly thought his arm was going to be ripped off his body, but he managed, with two huge strides and a dive to get around in time to take a thunderous breakfall. Shirata sensei threw him three more times, Shibata-san taking impeccable ukemi now, and he got up, a man in love. Others of us felt the same, both for the deserved come-uppance of our well-liked, but feared sempai, and also for this unknown-to-us, titanically powerful old man. Unbelievably, though, many of the French were still talking, casually strolling off the mat, even as Shirata sensei demonstrated another technique. Shibata-san, who, I'm sure, had been fuming at their behavior already, launched himself like an out-of-orbit comet managing a multiple attack of the entire Western world. Well, actually, he attacked the entire Western world. He was sweeping around the mat, jumping in to a pair of practicing foreigners, and grabbing one after another, launching them through the air, off the mat onto the wooden runway, or literally splattering them against the walls, then moving on to another pale-skinned pair and doing the same. It was like watching a fin-nipper in an aquarium, with all the guppies swirling away every time he drew near, one after another caught and mangled. Then, all of a sudden, he grabbed me, and spinning, wound up to throw me right into a wall. I managed to step inside him and turn, an inward tai-no-henko, spun him another half turn, and with our momentum, his back slammed against the wall. His eyes were blank and he raised a fist, but before he knocked me out, I grabbed his shoulders and yelled, "Shibata-san, Ore da! Ore da!" (It's me! It's me!). He shook himself like a wolf throwing off water, patted me on the shoulder and in English, said in a merry tone, "Oh, I'm sorry!" and spun away, grabbed another Frenchman and sent him flying.

The last half-hour of the class was much better behaved, I must say. Shirata sensei simply continued, unperturbed throughout the entire time, as if to say, "I'm simply here doing what I'm doing. If you want to pay attention, you are welcome."

I have a vivid memory of the feel of Shibata-san's technique. He moved his body as "one-piece." Not the most flexible of men, there was always a little bit of over-all tonus throughout his body. He both appeared to be and felt somewhat stiff and constricted. He did not, therefore, move like a grappler, with Rickson Gracie's oft-quoted phrase, "I flow with their go." He made things work with explosive power and speed, whatever the angle, whatever the technique. Aside from his irimi-nage, he delivered a sharp impact with every technique, be it kotegaeshi, shihonage, ikkyo or kokyu-nage. He always felt like you had walked into the edge of a door in the dark. Remember the phrase attributed to Osensei, that "aikido is (70% or 95% or 99%) atemi." Shibata-san was an atemi; he always felt like a living tegatana.

For those inclined to post, please re-read the introductory column before doing so. The rules for contributors, in short:

Only people who have actually taken ukemi the teacher who is the subject of this thread, may post

Simply post your direct experience of taking ukemi. This can include the nature of your relationship with them, as ukemi is more than merely taking falls.

Do not engage in back-and-forth with other posters, disputing their experience, or trying to prove why yours is more real. Just post your own experience. Trust your readers to take in each writer's account on its own merits.

If, for any reason, you find something to praise or condemn in anyone's description or wish to amplify your insights and perceptions, do so elsewhere. Start a thread about that subject in the appropriate section of Aikiweb.

Ellis Amdur is a licensed instructor (shihan) in two koryu: Araki-ryu Torite Kogusoku and Toda-ha Buko-ryu Naginatajutsu. His martial arts career is approximately forty years -- in addition to koryu, he has trained in a number of other combative arts, including muay thai, judo, xingyi and aikido.

A recognized expert in classical and modern Japanese martial traditions, he has authored three books and one instructional DVD on this subject. The most recent is his just released Hidden in Plain Sight: Tracing the Roots of Ueshiba Morihei's Power.

Information regarding his publications on martial arts, as well as other books on crisis intervention can be accessed at his website: www.edgework.info

Caius Cassius Longinus would definitely not be the first person who comes to mind when I think of Ichiro Shibata, especially in view of what Caesar says about him in the speech that follows his expressed preference for the plump.

I had an interesting encounter with Mr Shibata one Friday evening at the Hombu Dojo. As far as I remember, the encounter was set up by the present Doshu. I was on one of my visits to Tokyo and the then Waka Sensei informed me that Shibata Sensei wanted me to practice with him during Doshu's class. It was an offer I could not refuse.

The class was taught by Kisshomaru Doshu, but this did not mean a great deal, for we practiced a range of waza that Shibata-san decided. We occupied a space in a corner of the dojo, into which no one else trespassed. I remember that Frank Noel was practicing right next to us and Doshu occasionally wandered over and gave me a look of bemusement, perhaps tinged with sympathy, before wandering off again.

Well, it is fair to say that I was put through the ringer and I was not allowed to throw Mr Shibata very much. He was solid, well planted, and very difficult to move. I also suspect that he was also upholding the reputations of the Hombu instructors, as Ellis suggested in his article. One small consolation I had, however, was that he could not put the 4-kyo pin on my wrists and this caused him some concern: try as he may, I refused to tap until the last moment and he also saw that I was tapping because it was time to move on to the next waza, not because he had successfully applied the pin.

My hour with Mr Shibata reminded me of a similar training session with his senior at the Hombu Dojo, K Chiba.

I have very limited experience taking falls for Shibata Sensei in seminar situations. I did not feel in any physical danger and did not experience any fear when working with him, but I felt that I could not live up to his expectations for awareness, strength of attack or engagement. I remember an interview with Terry Dobson where he was asked what it was like to take falls with O Sensei and he said something like that it didn't feel that different but that O Sensei demanded all of his attention. This matches my experience taking falls with Shihan in general. I have been thrown harder and certainly more roughly by less experienced people, but Shibata Sensei expected me to give my all and my all wasn't enough. He gave no outward sign of disgust or contempt, but I felt embarrassed by my encounters with him.

One thing that I think that is missing from this picture is that Shibata Sensei does have a sense of humor and he sometimes whispered jokes in the middle techniques. One of the things that I like about the way Shibata Sensei teaches is that he generally works on basic techniques but with a live feeling of spontaneity. One time that I took falls for him, he changed techniques (I felt that it was because I made a weak attack, but who knows) and he grabbed my thumb, passed underneath my arm similar to shihonage to throw. The throw was powerful, but not risky to my arm. Just before the throw he whispered "Sorry" in a joking voice. This was the first time that I experienced that humor, but a few other times he would smile and make a joke in the middle of technique. Because of the concentration required to take falls for him, I was always surprised when it happened and would only remember to smile after I bowed out.

Shortly after first formally starting aikido in 1992 I joined the Shibata Juku at Berkeley Aikikai and trained regularly through to sankyu (this took quite a while as I mastered in failing tests). Not very long in the larger scheme of things but still a pretty important phase of ones exposure to the art.

Very interesting bunch of folks there and quite an eclectic group. Being on the mat with many yondan and godans was quite interesting as the classes were always quite large with a very diverse range of skill sets being present. Good stuff for a eager 3-4kyu knuckle-head like me.

Mostly the seniors or participants in the shidoin/fukushidoin program were used as uke but Shibata sensei would wander about on occasion and when he spotted some interesting or spirited practice he would step in and have a 'taste'. On one day I was training with a fellow (I think his name is Ron - it's been a while) we were doing tenchi nage and I was in fine form as uke and right on the edge of my abilities. Shibata sensei seemed interested and came over to give me a go and I totally bailed so he left with that certain look of dissapointment.

I didn't mean to but for some reason (now I see it was conditioned into me) I was a bit overly compliant and basically threw myself. It probably didn't help that when going to the mat I went to slap and hit his almost healed broken foot ... I slapped pretty hard back in those days, too.

On another occasion Shibata sensei got me into a funky two armed pin and just sort of played with me while I figured out to tap with my foot - honestly I was thinking of how nice a stretch it was and if I could roll over and out of it ... not likely I decided and tapped.

I even got a chance to perform technique upon Shibata sensei. Many of those dissapointed looks ensued.

Watching Shibata sensei work with the seniors one as impressionable as myself (and many others still just up and coming) could not help being a bit scared or intimidated as the energy level was very high and the techniques quite vigorously applied. In some cases it could seem over the top and indeed some remarked as such. Still, with the juniors and the big fellers like me (6'4" 235 lbs) I never had a problem with the intensity level as it was always tapered to fit as far as I could tell. If anything Shibata sensei was taking it a bit too easy on the big doofus.

To this day my favorite technique is yonkyo (4-kyo) and pretty much nobody can make me tap thanks to the fine demonstrations of the technique applied by Shibata sensei. Undoubtedly due to Prof. Goldbury encouraging Shibata sensei to furthur research methods of application by the time I came on the scene Shibata sensei might have figured a better way to apply that technique.

"In my opinion, the time of spreading aikido to the world is finished; now we have to focus on quality." Yamada Yoshimitsu